The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for providing instruction and training for medical devices. More particularly, the disclosure provides instruction and training around alarm behavior in medical devices having alarm management systems.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In the field of healthcare, caregivers (e.g., doctors and other healthcare professionals) often desire to monitor certain physiological characteristics of their patients. Accordingly, a wide variety of monitoring devices have been developed for monitoring many such physiological characteristics. These monitoring devices often provide doctors and other healthcare personnel with information that facilitates provision of the best possible healthcare for their patients. As a result, such monitoring devices have become a perennial feature of modern medicine.
One technique for monitoring physiological characteristics of a patient is commonly referred to as pulse oximetry, and the devices built based upon pulse oximetry techniques are commonly referred to as pulse oximeters. Pulse oximeters may be used to measure and monitor various blood flow characteristics of a patient. For example, a pulse oximeter may be utilized to monitor the blood oxygen saturation of hemoglobin in arterial blood, the volume of individual blood pulsations supplying the tissue, and/or the rate of blood pulsations corresponding to each heartbeat of a patient. In fact, the “pulse” in pulse oximetry refers to the time-varying amount of arterial blood in the tissue during each cardiac cycle.
Pulse oximetry monitors have become increasingly complex, providing a variety of settings that are configurable by the end user. For example, the settings that trigger an alarm indication may be selected based on the patient's clinical condition. In particular, the alarm settings used for a relatively healthy and active patient may have a higher threshold for certain types of alarms, while a patient in a critical care setting may have alarm settings that include lower thresholds. Configuring a monitor with improper threshold settings may cause an alarm to be too sensitive and result in nuisance alarms.